In a 754-page report sent to Congress, the Court of Auditors lays bare the Ministry of Finance’s accounting for 2024. The report is filled with “reservations” (qualifications) that reflect a multi-billion euro use of debt and EU funds to cover up the absence of a formal Budget, inflated revenues—by no less than €11.263 billion—and a record hole in the pension system.
In 2024, the Government spent €77.341 billion more than initially planned in the extended 2023 Budgets and had to finance 95% of it with debt—which fuels interest payments—because it lacked the legal basis to do so otherwise. “Of the €77,341.9 million net increase in the expenditure budget (€10,612.2 million coming from credit carryovers), €73,182.8 million were not covered by other sources, resorting to changes in the outstanding debt balance for its financing,” the report highlights. “The failure to submit the mandatory 2024 Budget Bill prevented its debate in the General Courts (…) and causes, among other circumstances, uncertainty regarding the applicability in 2024 of certain rules linked to budget management,” even councilors proposed by the PSOE confirm.
Another controversial aspect is the diversion of €2.389 billion to pay retired civil servants and supplement the lowest pensions. “The insufficiency of budgetary credit to meet unavoidable commitments for civil service pensions and minimum pension supplements of the Social Security System prompted the authorization of two modifications for €2,389.4 million (a credit expansion on November 6, 2024, for €1,722.1 million and a credit transfer on November 19, 2024, for €667.3 million), both financed with surplus credits from service 50 Recovery and Resilience Facility,” the report states.
Despite all the reforms by the current Government, the negative net worth—technical bankruptcy, were it a company—of the Social Security system already rose to €106.139 billion in 2024, a new record.
